UserContext

vs

UserMetadata

which one to choose for user profile data such as timezone, address, etc.?

Hi, So if you want any information to be stored for a given user you should use user UserMetaData

What are the use cases for

UserContext

?

The documentation probably explains it best, but it’s a way to make the override feature more powerful.

I assume that the only fields stored during signup are email and password. If I have to add common fields such as "name", I should override

signupPost

and from there, I should call

UserMetadata.updateUserMetadata(userId, { name: "John Doe" });

Yep thats correct, the signin/up functions (both frontend and backend) support custom fields and then you would use the

UserMetaData

to store the information

Follow up question I want this information(name, timezone, etc.) on all the pages so that I can show it in the menu bar. When I'm storing this info, I'm making usermetadata request on every page. Is there any more effective way to do this? My first instict goes to either storing this info in the token payload or the session info, how can I do that?

Right on the backend you can add the information to the access token payload

how to add info to token payload?

Theres a couple ways to do that, what recipe are you using?

email password for now

Ah Id recommend using thirdpartyemailpassword recipe instead then and just enable third party later. But to add to access token payload you can follow this doc: https://supertokens.com/docs/thirdpartyemailpassword/common-customizations/sessions/update-jwt-payload

Ok. I assume this token/session info update is not saved in db so in order to persist this info we should first updater userMetaData and then get the userMetaData and update session/token info at the time of login. Is this right?

If you add it to the access token payload then it is persisted (so that the payload remains the same when the access token is refreshed)

and when we sign out and login again, I should add the info again to the token?

Yep

Thank you. Let me do that

Youd need this in sign up as well

This is what I have done now. I am calling following fn in

signInPost

and

signUpPOST

override

async function storeUserMetaDataInTokenPayload(session, user) {
  let userMetaData = await UserMetadata.getUserMetadata(user.id);
  let currAccessTokenPayload = session.getAccessTokenPayload();
  console.debug("currAccessTokenPayload: " + JSON.stringify(currAccessTokenPayload));
  let accessTokenPayloadWithMetadata = Object.assign({}, userMetaData ? userMetaData.metadata : null, currAccessTokenPayload, userInfo);
  console.debug("accessTokenPayloadWithMetadata: " + JSON.stringify(accessTokenPayloadWithMetadata));
  await session.updateAccessTokenPayload(accessTokenPayloadWithMetadata);
}

And then I have a middleware for session verification on the backend where on successful session verification, I do this

req.user = session.getAccessTokenPayload()

. So now, I can access all user info via

req.user

on backend and in the token payload on the frontend.

Yeah that looks good